Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(6)
The knowe in Muir Woods belonged to Arden’s father before his death. Someone had sealed it after he died and she disappeared, keeping it from the clutches of the false Queen. Its continued existence had been our first real clue that Arden was still out there somewhere, waiting to be found. Without a member of the Windermere line to anchor it, it should have faded back into the Summerlands, becoming inaccessible from the mortal world. Instead, it had waited, patient as a faithful hound, certain that its master would return. Now, with her in full-time residence and her people working to open, restore, and decorate the place, it was slowly returning to the majesty it must have possessed before King Gilad’s death.
Which was very inspirational and all, but knowes were living things that didn’t have to play by the normal rules of linear space and sensible architecture. Every time I came to visit, the place seemed to have grown larger, and half the new rooms didn’t make any sense in relation to the rooms around them. The entry hall was relatively static, for which I was grateful. Everything else was anybody’s guess, and I’ve never been a fan of guessing games.
Arden led me down the entry hall to a narrow doorway and through that doorway to a winding stairway that seemed to stretch upward for the better part of forever. On the mortal side of the knowe, the whole vast estate was just a crude door in a redwood tree, surrounded by more on every side. Here in the Summerlands, the redwoods remained, although these were fae trees, never threatened by loggers or pollutants. Consequently, they’d grown even taller than the giants of the mortal California coast. They were interspersed with the equally tall spires of the castle battlements and towers. We were inside one of those towers; I realized that before we passed the first window and I saw the woolly red bark of the trees growing outside.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Patience,” said Arden, and kept climbing.
Most of the responses I wanted to offer to that would have been inappropriate, especially considering that she was the Queen and I didn’t want to be banished. Again. I bit my tongue and kept climbing, following the curve of the stairs up, up, up, until we came to a short landing. The stairs continued upward. Arden ignored them, opening the door on the landing and revealing a wooden walkway wending off into the trees. I inched close enough to see that we were at least fifty feet above the ground. The forest floor was a distant, far-off dream.
“Nope,” I said, taking a step backward.
Arden turned to me, raising her eyebrows. “What?”
“I said, nope,” I said. “Not going out there. No. Would I survive a fall from that height? Sure. I’ve done it before. I’d just lie there screaming while I waited for my bones to knit back together. No big deal, except for the part where no way in hell am I going out on that thing. That’s what, three feet across and made of untreated redwood? In this fog? That’s going to be as slippery as a Merrow’s ass, and I’m not going to do it.”
“I need you to come with me,” said Arden. She seemed puzzled, like she couldn’t understand why I wasn’t jumping to obey.
“You’re getting better at this whole ‘monarch’ thing, but no,” I said. “I know my sense of balance, I know how often I get hurt, and I know it’s not a good idea to tempt fate. I’m not going out there.”
“Oh, for the love of Maeve,” muttered Arden. She took a step toward me. I braced myself for the inevitable attempt to haul me through the door. Instead, she waved a hand in the air before shoving me backward, through the portal that had opened behind me. I stumbled, caught off-guard—
—and emerged in the middle of the treetop walkway. As I’d feared, the wood was slick from the fog hanging around us, and my sneakers slipped slightly before I managed to catch my balance and go still. Standing dead center, there was only about a foot of wood to either side of me. It would be so easy to fall. So very, very easy to fall.
Arden stepped through the portal, which closed behind her, and looked at me. “There,” she said. “They say the first step is the hardest, and so I’ve spared you that much. Now will you come on?”
I gaped at her. “Root and branch, you can’t be serious right now.” I waved one arm as much as I dared, trying to indicate the area around us without attracting the attention of gravity. “Bridge! Very long drop! If you can teleport me here, why can’t you just teleport us to where Walther and your brother are waiting?”
“Because Master Davies says the potion he’s brewed to counter the effects of elf-shot is delicate, and if we want it to have the best shot of working, we shouldn’t do any magic in the room,” said Arden. “No illusions, no gateways, nothing. I want them awake. That means we’re not doing anything to endanger that.”
“If you drop me off a bridge, I’m pretty sure Walther is going to be a little reluctant to wake up your brother!” I don’t have a fear of heights. I have a healthy respect for heights. I really, really respected the fact that a fall from this height would hurt like hell, even if it probably wouldn’t kill me. My particular bloodline came with accelerated healing, to the point that I’d survived being stabbed in the heart, and had probably drowned on at least two occasions. That didn’t mean I didn’t feel pain. If anything, it meant I felt pain more, since I could heal from my initial injuries before I finished receiving the next ones down the line.